Written by Cyndee Wedge | 03 February 2010

While it is evident that leaders at all levels of civil government today are violating the U. S. Constitution, a past Michigan citizen, who was the prosecuting attorney for Mackinac County, a U. S. Representative and a Senator, was respected as a leader who upheld our Constitution.

Prentiss Brown, from St. Ignace, is a fine example of a man with virtue.  At the age of 17 he worked on the great lakes steamer Chippewa along with seasoned seamen and rough college students.  Raised a Methodist, his first night on board, he was faced with a tough decision; should he kneel in prayer, as was his custom before bedtime, in front of all the men.  As he remembered later, “It was a terrible struggle, but with fear and trembling, I did it.”  He was surprised when the crew became respectfully quiet and did not ridicule him for his pious act.  This tough decision and making the right choice set the stage for him to make other right choices, though tough, throughout his life.

Before America’s entry into WW I, while Brown was prosecuting attorney for Mackinac County, he learned of a secret, anti-German meeting being held to drive the Germans out of the community of Moran.  He burst into the meeting shaming and embarrassing the plotters so that they sheepishly and quickly ended their planning and scheming. Similarly, a few years later, he insured that a group of the Ku Klux Klan did nothing unlawful or violent. 

Although he was defeated when he ran for congress in 1924, and for Justice of the Michigan Supreme Court in 1928, he successfully ran for U. S. Representative in 1932 and was re-elected in 1934.  He became a Senator in 1936.  When President Franklin Roosevelt became frustrated with the Supreme Court, which ruled many of his New Deal policies unconstitutional, he wanted to add six more liberal-minded men to the Court.  Congress rightly saw this as collusion between the legislative and executive branches and a direct violation of separation of powers and the checks and balances written into the constitution.  Since Senator Brown was senior “freshman” senator, he was called into President Roosevelt’s office on three consecutive Sunday mornings trying to persuade Brown to accept the Court reorganization plan.  Referring to the incident on board the “Chippewa”, Brown proudly said later that “the man of fifty did not let down the boy of seventeen.”  A few weeks later, at great risk to his career, he along with four other Senators confronted President Roosevelt, telling him, “Mr. President, it’s the hardest thing in the world to tell you something you don’t want to hear…to give you bad news.  But we’re here to tell you we can’t go along with this Court bill.” 

Later, when Roosevelt wanted to usurp legislative authority by reorganizing the executive branch, Brown fought against that, too.  He sought to do what was right according to the Constitution knowing it could cost him his career.  However, he was respected for his integrity and unswerving commitment to what was right by other senators, leaders, and even the President himself, who chose him for other positions of leadership. 

A quiet man, he was often called “a Michigan man, pure and simple…the most typical American.”  Yet he preferred to be remembered as “a true Christian, a square shooter.”  Michigan has a right to be proud of Prentiss Brown as Senator and how he stood for the Constitution.  After retiring from Washington, he continued to be “a Michigan man”, as he relentlessly worked to see that a bridge was built across the Straits of Mackinac.  He never forgot the day when he was thirty and had to catch a train to Lansing, but the ice had closed down the ferry, so he was forced to walk across, amongst ten-foot high ice ridges and around a large patch of open water on a bitterly cold, snowy winter day.  This memory remained with him, and spurred him on to see the Mackinac Bridge completed the first of November 1957.

Let’s raise up more men of Constitutional virtue and morality from Michigan.  Will you be one who will help lead your community, State or Country back to Constitutional integrity?  If not you, who?  Do you know of someone who could do this? If so, do all you can to help get them elected.   In this time of national Constitutional crisis, we need men of Senator Brown’s personal dedication to do what is right for the State and Country despite what it may cost them personally.  For what office will you volunteer?

Source of Information:  “The ‘Right’ Man”, pp.54-61, Michigan History, September/October, 2009